08/01/2026
When Systems Fragment in Their Attempt to Understand the Human Being
– a nature-based critique of the linear civilization
By Ronnie Kristensen
Psychologist
Chief Psychologist, Nordic Crisis Corps
Chief Psychologist, Project Paulus
Founder and Head of Practice, Center for Nature-Based Human Development
Developer of Nature-Based Human Development Theory
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Again and again, it is pointed out that our systems are fragmented. That interventions do not cohere. That citizens fall between institutional cracks. That there is a lack of wholeness, overview, and coordination.
The problem is that this way of speaking rarely touches the actual core of the issue. It makes fragmentation appear as an organizational accident—something that could be solved with better structures, clearer interfaces, or more efficient communication.
But fragmentation is not an accident.
It is a condition.
Our systems are not fragmented because they attempt to hold the complexity of the human being and fail in that attempt. They are fragmented because they are built upon a view of the human being, of development, and of the world that has never been capable of holding living wholeness in the first place. And as long as we do not acknowledge this, we will continue to repair the surface while reproducing harm at a deeper level.
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A civilization built on a fundamental misunderstanding
Modern society largely rests on one basic assumption: that the world can be understood, governed, and improved through rational, linear thinking. Historically, this assumption has been necessary. It has given us science, technology, legal principles, and administrative systems that replaced arbitrariness and dogma.
But it has also come at a cost.
In the same movement, we began to understand the human being as something that could be divided without loss. The body was reduced to biology, the psyche to inner mental life, relationships to context, and existence to a private concern. The human being became something that could be broken into parts, regulated in segments, and optimized functionally.
The human being can be forced to function in fragments.
But it cannot live that way without consequences.
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Linear development and its quiet violence
Linearly organized systems carry certain assumptions with them: that development progresses in stages, that problems have singular causes, that solutions can be designed in advance, and that deviation is primarily a failure. Human development, however, does not follow this logic.
Human development is rhythmic and cyclical. It moves between stability and disintegration, vulnerability and strength. When this living movement encounters systems that demand predictability, continuity, and linear progression, a pressure emerges that is not merely psychological, but biological.
Time, pace, and demands gradually fall out of sync with the organism’s own regulatory rhythms—sleep, affect, attention, recovery. What is lost is not only meaning. It is self-regulation itself. The human being therefore begins to adapt to the system—not because it is healthy, but because it is necessary in order to remain within it. This adaptation rarely appears as violence. It is quiet, slow, and often disguised as help.
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Nature-Based Human Development Theory: the human being as a living organism
Nature-Based Human Development Theory begins in one place and refuses to leave it: the human being is a living organism. Not as a metaphor. Not as a pedagogical image. But as a biological, psychological, and existential reality.
This means that the human being regulates itself through rhythm, responds meaningfully to strain, seeks to preserve integrity, and develops symptoms when pushed beyond its capacity to carry load. From this perspective, stress is not an individual failure, but a signal of rhythmic overload. Anxiety is not irrational, but a bodily alarm state. Depression is often not a lack of will, but a biological and existential shutdown when continued mobilization has become impossible.
When these phenomena are treated in isolation, their meaning is lost. And when meaning is lost, healing is lost as well.
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From civilizational critique to core concept
Up to this point, the text has described the structural and cultural conditions that characterize the modern, linearly organized civilization. But to understand how these conditions concretely settle into human lives, it becomes necessary to gather them into a more precise concept.
In Nature-Based Human Development Theory, this cumulative dynamic is described as systemic powerlessness.
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Systemic powerlessness – when the system becomes a closed field
In Nature-Based Human Development Theory, systemic powerlessness refers to a state of strain that does not arise within the human being alone, but in the encounter between the human being and the system. Systemic powerlessness is not a feeling. It is a condition that develops over time when specific structural and cultural circumstances make genuine impact impossible.
At the generative level, systemic powerlessness emerges when four conditions are present simultaneously.
First, when the interests of the system conflict with those of the individual. Systems have legitimate interests in stability, economy, governability, and self-preservation. Human beings have needs for integrity, rhythm, meaning, and development. When the system holds definitional power and these interests collide, the human being’s needs will systematically be forced to yield.
Second, when internal system narratives come into conflict with human nature. Narratives that reduce vulnerability, rhythmic fluctuation, and biological strain to deviations or deficiencies. Within such narratives, the human being becomes wrong—not because of behavior, but because of nature.
Third, when narcissistic self-interest and the inability to acknowledge error are allowed to take hold. Systems are inhabited by people, and within hierarchical structures, power, prestige, and self-image can render genuine error recognition threatening. Errors are denied, displaced, or projected, because acknowledgment is experienced as loss.
Fourth, when the system begins to protect itself. Systemic self-protection manifests as closure, silence, procedural deflection, and pseudo-processes that simulate action without altering underlying conditions.
Together, these four conditions create a closed field in which the human being gradually loses the experience of having impact.
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Systemic powerlessness as lived experience
At the level of lived effect, systemic powerlessness manifests as repeated attempts to reach out without real change, responsibility dissolving across levels, silence or postponement as practice, and processes that keep the human being occupied without altering the burden. Over time, the human being internalizes blame, loses trust in their own signals, and begins to fragment themselves in order to remain present.
Affect is split off. Bodily signals are muted. Intuition weakens. Sensation is reduced. Nature-Based Human Development Theory describes this as culturally induced dissociation—not as a diagnosis, but as a biological and relational survival strategy within a non-responsive field.
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Fragmentation, governance, and responsibility
Fragmentation is therefore not merely an administrative problem. It is an expression of systemic self-protection. When human harm is divided into case categories, responsibility disappears between them. No one has done anything wrong—and yet someone has been destroyed.
In Nature-Based Human Development Theory, responsibility is not understood solely in juridical terms, but as field responsibility: responsibility for whether the conditions one creates allow the human being to preserve integrity. This is a far more demanding form of responsibility, precisely because it cannot be reduced to procedure.
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Time, healing, and false wholeness
Linear systems struggle with time. They operate through deadlines and milestones, while human development requires rhythm, repetition, and space for integration. When time is not given, the human being is locked into compensatory patterns that may resemble functionality from the outside, but are experienced as exhaustion from within.
Today, there is much talk of wholeness. But wholeness cannot be administered. It arises only when the human being’s own capacity for coherence is respected. Resonance cannot be managed. One can only create the conditions under which it may emerge.
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This is not a choice
The paradigm shift described here is not ideological. It is biological, psychological, and existential. A system that ignores human nature will inevitably begin to cause harm—regardless of intention.
The human being is not created for the system.
The system is created by human beings.
And if we are to preserve both, we must begin in the same place: by taking the human being seriously as a living, rhythmic organism—not in words, but in foundational assumptions.
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Closing note
This article forms part of the broader work on Nature-Based Human Development Theory, in which systemic powerlessness is understood as a dual-level phenomenon: generated within the structure and culture of systems, and carried within the human body, psyche, and life. The article serves as a principled framework for the continued theoretical and applied development of NMU.
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